I have read with huge admiration and great sadness the tale as told by Sokwanele in last week's copy of The Zimbabwean (25 Nov-1 Dec). Headed `Reality of Zanu's rule in rural areas' it is summarized by the editor: `Sokwanele provides a glimpse of the terrifying reality of Zanu (PF) power at village level as it is exercised today: the law - whatever the local chef says it is; the police and traditional leaders - totally subservient to the political masters; mob justice - the order of the day; wild life conservation - a dead letter'
So shattering is the revelation in this brilliant portrayal of a society being systematically destroyed as each human abomination descends upon the rural people - themselves made criminal and degenerate by being forced to squat on stolen land, that it deserves to be more widely circulated. Readers can better comprehend, when reviewing Sokwanele's latest, just how fundamentally things have changed in Zimbabwe. The piece deserves a study worthy of a doctorate. I will try to get my links working for readers to see the whole, but in the meanwhile, will settle down to detailed commentary in my next blog.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
A FREE LUNCH
They say there's no such thing. I had my doubts but have just discovered proof positive that there IS such a thing - quite literally - as a free lunch.
Leaving my Zimbabwe theme aside for now (but inevitably there will be some correlation), the story is told by a Telegraph columnist, Sam Leith (when I have mastered LINKS I will insert the ref) who took the trouble to follow up a great scam:
10 officials of the Department of Trade and Industry were found by Ernst and Young's accounting firm to have drunk an unbelievable quantity of booze - hard tack, wine, beer, Irish coffee, sparkling water, coffee etc - at last year's Christmas party. They had hired expensive sports cars to get to meetings, flown business class across the world, visited Barbados "by way of investigating British export prospects". Leith says he laughed like a hyena to read that the investigation was never completed, "...it started to look like their inquiry would end up costing more than the wasted money into which they were inquiring"
Leith could find no words to tell us what this means. Obviously it means that there is such a thing as a free lunch, especially if you spend enough of other people's money to make sure its free.
Now here comes the Zimbabwe bit:
Mugabe's government has deliberately flattened the economy by means which are now well known. Those kleptomaniacs don't care. I had it from the horse's mouth a few years ago; a friend who later became a Minister of Finance told me that it is policy in a cash strapped underdeveloped country to buy the luxuries (like those above) with money from the national treasury because the donor countries/agencies will fork out for the necessities that keep the economy ticking over. Somebody might like to do his Ph.D thesis on the subject.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Leaving my Zimbabwe theme aside for now (but inevitably there will be some correlation), the story is told by a Telegraph columnist, Sam Leith (when I have mastered LINKS I will insert the ref) who took the trouble to follow up a great scam:
10 officials of the Department of Trade and Industry were found by Ernst and Young's accounting firm to have drunk an unbelievable quantity of booze - hard tack, wine, beer, Irish coffee, sparkling water, coffee etc - at last year's Christmas party. They had hired expensive sports cars to get to meetings, flown business class across the world, visited Barbados "by way of investigating British export prospects". Leith says he laughed like a hyena to read that the investigation was never completed, "...it started to look like their inquiry would end up costing more than the wasted money into which they were inquiring"
Leith could find no words to tell us what this means. Obviously it means that there is such a thing as a free lunch, especially if you spend enough of other people's money to make sure its free.
Now here comes the Zimbabwe bit:
Mugabe's government has deliberately flattened the economy by means which are now well known. Those kleptomaniacs don't care. I had it from the horse's mouth a few years ago; a friend who later became a Minister of Finance told me that it is policy in a cash strapped underdeveloped country to buy the luxuries (like those above) with money from the national treasury because the donor countries/agencies will fork out for the necessities that keep the economy ticking over. Somebody might like to do his Ph.D thesis on the subject.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Sunday, November 20, 2005
DIDYMUS THE GREAT DICTATOR
He has been through some torrid times, has Didymus Mutasa - appointed to the colonial civil service, the first of such appointments; sheltered by the religious at St Faiths; tutored by Clutton Brock, the great exemplar of self-reliant living in a co-operative at Cold Comfort Farm; briefly housed in a relatively civilized jail (unlike his government's jails today) where they didn't starve him or torture him; hosted by foreign countries, Britain amongst them, which extended cash for his ZANU party; given a top job as Speaker in the new Zimbabwe; faltered a little in difficult lowly administrative jobs until finally, he has all the power a man could wish for. He is in charge of state security and has the land, all the land at his disposal. Or effectively that last heaven is where he has landed. Is this the stuff of which a great dictator is made? I think he must be running for President. Note his more recent brilliance: he would cheerfully halve the population - the half that will not support his crazy party, and the very latest is the Sunday Times report; Mutasa's claim that journalists and NGOs must get out of Zimbabwe because they are a threat to state security. These latest utterings are strangely apt. When you aim to become a great dictator, journalists and NGOs, especially humanitarian ones ARE a threat to Zimbabwe's state security at this time. They might be a threat to all those years of suffering Didymus has had to endure and take away the great prize that he has won, weilding unhindered power. He is a rare survivor of the Manyika clan. I think he feels just a little bit insecure and may well be trying to impress his cronies with his toughness. He would make a great dictator.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Saturday, November 19, 2005
WHAT IS A FAILED STATE?
My understanding is that a failed state is one which ceases to be taken seriously as a sovereign (Mugabe's favourite word - going with his fascinaton for British royalty)and independent state, has a worthless currency, cannot pay its bills and has a poor human rights record. There is more, but isn't that enough?
What I find most distressing is the accuracy with which we Zimbabweans who were not busy feeding from the products of state plunder, predicted what would happen once the farms, or rather the agriculture industry was trashed. We knew it would come to this - the failed state - but we stayed in denial for as long as we could. For that reason we put our hopes in a popular opposition party, led by men and women of real integrity who had the courage to go on in spite of discouragement, danger and many deaths.
Very soon, since the split, we shall have two opposition parties made up of MDC brains on one side and popularist brawn on the other. This could lead to schisms, and more schisms, just like the Independent churches. For my reader's edification(yes, I have put the apostrophe in the right place - my one reader!), I studied those churches long ago. It seemed that once there was a `collection box' being passed around the little tree-shaded congregation, following the newest prophet, another one sprouted every week-end. Now, donors/supporters will be reluctant to have to choose their faction in the political opposition ranks or split the money. On one side, they may appreciate the excellent (but not perfect)past performance of Morgan Tsvangirai (which is unfortunately queered by his antipathy to the South African leadership) while on the other, the absence of a charismatic national leader, is nerve wracking. Now that the army is getting restless and impoverished junior ranks are stealing or getting out, the signs for another army Corporal trying the Idi Amin route begin to take shape.
I remember well the late Anne Mujeni (bless her)who worked in the Adult Education Department of UZ when I was studying there in the early seventies. As the first signs of insurgency on our North-Eastern borders began, she raised her eyes to heaven and exclaimed `Oh my God! We are in for coup and counter-coup! I remember it as if it was yesterday. We escaped the coups in the first quarter century. Now we should fear them again. Uganda recovered. How many decades before a failed state recovers in the 21st century?
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
What I find most distressing is the accuracy with which we Zimbabweans who were not busy feeding from the products of state plunder, predicted what would happen once the farms, or rather the agriculture industry was trashed. We knew it would come to this - the failed state - but we stayed in denial for as long as we could. For that reason we put our hopes in a popular opposition party, led by men and women of real integrity who had the courage to go on in spite of discouragement, danger and many deaths.
Very soon, since the split, we shall have two opposition parties made up of MDC brains on one side and popularist brawn on the other. This could lead to schisms, and more schisms, just like the Independent churches. For my reader's edification(yes, I have put the apostrophe in the right place - my one reader!), I studied those churches long ago. It seemed that once there was a `collection box' being passed around the little tree-shaded congregation, following the newest prophet, another one sprouted every week-end. Now, donors/supporters will be reluctant to have to choose their faction in the political opposition ranks or split the money. On one side, they may appreciate the excellent (but not perfect)past performance of Morgan Tsvangirai (which is unfortunately queered by his antipathy to the South African leadership) while on the other, the absence of a charismatic national leader, is nerve wracking. Now that the army is getting restless and impoverished junior ranks are stealing or getting out, the signs for another army Corporal trying the Idi Amin route begin to take shape.
I remember well the late Anne Mujeni (bless her)who worked in the Adult Education Department of UZ when I was studying there in the early seventies. As the first signs of insurgency on our North-Eastern borders began, she raised her eyes to heaven and exclaimed `Oh my God! We are in for coup and counter-coup! I remember it as if it was yesterday. We escaped the coups in the first quarter century. Now we should fear them again. Uganda recovered. How many decades before a failed state recovers in the 21st century?
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Monday, November 7, 2005
ZIMBABWE: THE UNTHINKABLE RESURFACES
It seemed that a split in the MDC had been averted but no, Zimbabwe is in the grip of a new crisis. Brian Raftopoulos has done his best to help the two factions find a compromise, a facesaver, anything that will restore the country's hopes for a return to sanity, but if he cannot broker a peace, I doubt if anybody can.
Protest marches were promised when I started this blog so I kept it short, never sent it and have taken it up again in para 3. The marches have failed, the MDC's leadership has failed, its long suffering membership has failed. What seems to lie ahead is a prospect that has, since independence, been unthinkable: a perpetual state of crisis to be overtaken by the ultimate catastophe of a failed state.
I will blog later on what a failed state means to Zimbabweans who have refused to believe that the innate worth of a potentially great society is incapable of restoring itself. Holding out patiently for the natural death of the man who has been held up by cronies, outlaws (and even in-laws), as a model for African leadership had a sort of nobility to it. That was a feasable excuse for failure to jettison a tyrant only so long as there was hope for new and better leadership. That was the best reason for his subjects to believe his opponents' promises of a new dawn - so long as they engaged in peaceful protest. The masses of Zimbabwe had even come to accept, as the price of peace, their slow starvation and death, directly attributable to his crazed leadership.
They have waited in vain and have become too weak in body and spirit to change. `Chinja!' the war cry of the only viable opposition party in twenty five years now rings hollow. If there is no hope of intervention from democratic friends, `chinja' means change all right - but only for the worse.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Protest marches were promised when I started this blog so I kept it short, never sent it and have taken it up again in para 3. The marches have failed, the MDC's leadership has failed, its long suffering membership has failed. What seems to lie ahead is a prospect that has, since independence, been unthinkable: a perpetual state of crisis to be overtaken by the ultimate catastophe of a failed state.
I will blog later on what a failed state means to Zimbabweans who have refused to believe that the innate worth of a potentially great society is incapable of restoring itself. Holding out patiently for the natural death of the man who has been held up by cronies, outlaws (and even in-laws), as a model for African leadership had a sort of nobility to it. That was a feasable excuse for failure to jettison a tyrant only so long as there was hope for new and better leadership. That was the best reason for his subjects to believe his opponents' promises of a new dawn - so long as they engaged in peaceful protest. The masses of Zimbabwe had even come to accept, as the price of peace, their slow starvation and death, directly attributable to his crazed leadership.
They have waited in vain and have become too weak in body and spirit to change. `Chinja!' the war cry of the only viable opposition party in twenty five years now rings hollow. If there is no hope of intervention from democratic friends, `chinja' means change all right - but only for the worse.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Friday, November 4, 2005
Van Hoogstraten – Tzar Nicholas or Old Nick?
THIS PIECE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE 4-10 NOVEMBER ISSUE OF THE ZIMBABWEAN, leader p.10 (under my own name) Its a lazy way of blogging but no time for new thoughts today.
How much do most Zimbabweans really know about Nicholas Van Hoogstraten except that he is very rich, owns a lot of property and business in the country, was briefly jailed in England’s Belmarsh prison, and is a frightening character who admires Robert Mugabe and all his works – describing him as "100 percent decent and incorruptible”. (Hard to agree with him here).
Enlightenment comes, so long as you wait long enough, read enough and are lucky to have access to an array of information resources – not the least being TV and the internet. I watched last week’s close-up of the man on a BBC2 television programme with enormous interest because I wanted to make up my own mind about him - since his wealth helps to prop up a regime which has all but destroyed the gains of Zimbabwe’s precious freedom. All journalism is biased, just as every individual, including this writer, is almost unavoidably biased; therefore, I beg the readers’ indulgence if I presume to assess the character of Van Hoogstraten. I do this because I am intrigued by the mysteries of human nature, especially if it verges on the inhuman. For me, there is nothing so revealing as body language. Van Hoogstraten revealed himself to be full of contradictions and - if his uncontrollable twitch, his mouth continuously working nervously - is anything to go by, he is as insecure as hell. Clearly, he is also extraordinarily vain and yet absolutely terrified in his chosen, unlovable role as a `loner’, modelling himself on Attila the Hun. He is not nearly hairy enough. His boasts of his heartlessness - a set piece showed him shouting down the phone: “I don’t care if he [a man owing him rent] is being carried off in an ambulance, I want my money, NOW!” I think this sort of thing, like his threatening judges who he said `should never set foot in southern Africa or “they will never see the light of the day" is designed to frighten people. One fearless judge has called him a "self-appointed emissary of Beelzebub" (old Nick?) whilst his own bravery seems mostly to be directed towards people who want to part him from his money. Interestingly, but not related to the Van Hoogstraten programme, some professional psychoanalysts on TV were trying to convince viewers that what makes seemingly harmless humans dangerous, suicide bombers for example, is their mad desire to be part of a group – not their religion or race or their unhappy childhood. This would certainly not apply to Nicholas Van Hoogstraten; he prefers his own company.
He says he won’t be coming to live in Zimbabwe soon because he has five young children in England and he softens towards his eldest son who will be his heir. The pleasant-looking young man may inherit huge shares in Zimbabwe’s tourist, mining, banking and agricultural industries (if they ever recover from their present doldrums): 35 727 640 shares in the Rainbow Tourism Group, 32 percent of coal produced in Hwange, 20 percent of NMB, seven percent of CFI, Ltd., one of Zimbabwe’s biggest agro-industrial firms, about 600 000 acres of farmland – he is Zimbabwe’s largest private landowner. This latter holding was given in exchange, we are told, from some dodgy dealings regarding the regime’s defence requirements. His farms have been `spared from seizure apparently to thank him for financial support’ (Sadly for him his ownership has been ignored by carelessly enthusiastic squatters).
This strange man contradicts himself: talking of how he spends his money: "I don't need it but it's my money and if I choose to give it away I'll choose one of the charities I support in Zimbabwe”. Charity? Now there’s a softie! He has recently said that he is tired of making money and plans a career in politics: “I am already involved with politics... well, not in this country." Has anybody told him that, being white and, generous though he is towards Mugabe, he cannot bank on a place in Zimbabwe’s ruling class, not yet anyway. The ethnic cleansing around the farms and businesses has caught on amongst Mugabe’s violent young green bombers who are getting hungry and fast running out of new targets.
His `grandiose second palace’ in Zimbabwe … `to match his £30 million palace’ in England would be fit for a king. The absolute monarch who rules in Zimbabwe right now is about a quarter of a century older than Nicholas. Perhaps Mugabe’s present palace would not be good enough for a would-be, second Tzar Nicholas.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
How much do most Zimbabweans really know about Nicholas Van Hoogstraten except that he is very rich, owns a lot of property and business in the country, was briefly jailed in England’s Belmarsh prison, and is a frightening character who admires Robert Mugabe and all his works – describing him as "100 percent decent and incorruptible”. (Hard to agree with him here).
Enlightenment comes, so long as you wait long enough, read enough and are lucky to have access to an array of information resources – not the least being TV and the internet. I watched last week’s close-up of the man on a BBC2 television programme with enormous interest because I wanted to make up my own mind about him - since his wealth helps to prop up a regime which has all but destroyed the gains of Zimbabwe’s precious freedom. All journalism is biased, just as every individual, including this writer, is almost unavoidably biased; therefore, I beg the readers’ indulgence if I presume to assess the character of Van Hoogstraten. I do this because I am intrigued by the mysteries of human nature, especially if it verges on the inhuman. For me, there is nothing so revealing as body language. Van Hoogstraten revealed himself to be full of contradictions and - if his uncontrollable twitch, his mouth continuously working nervously - is anything to go by, he is as insecure as hell. Clearly, he is also extraordinarily vain and yet absolutely terrified in his chosen, unlovable role as a `loner’, modelling himself on Attila the Hun. He is not nearly hairy enough. His boasts of his heartlessness - a set piece showed him shouting down the phone: “I don’t care if he [a man owing him rent] is being carried off in an ambulance, I want my money, NOW!” I think this sort of thing, like his threatening judges who he said `should never set foot in southern Africa or “they will never see the light of the day" is designed to frighten people. One fearless judge has called him a "self-appointed emissary of Beelzebub" (old Nick?) whilst his own bravery seems mostly to be directed towards people who want to part him from his money. Interestingly, but not related to the Van Hoogstraten programme, some professional psychoanalysts on TV were trying to convince viewers that what makes seemingly harmless humans dangerous, suicide bombers for example, is their mad desire to be part of a group – not their religion or race or their unhappy childhood. This would certainly not apply to Nicholas Van Hoogstraten; he prefers his own company.
He says he won’t be coming to live in Zimbabwe soon because he has five young children in England and he softens towards his eldest son who will be his heir. The pleasant-looking young man may inherit huge shares in Zimbabwe’s tourist, mining, banking and agricultural industries (if they ever recover from their present doldrums): 35 727 640 shares in the Rainbow Tourism Group, 32 percent of coal produced in Hwange, 20 percent of NMB, seven percent of CFI, Ltd., one of Zimbabwe’s biggest agro-industrial firms, about 600 000 acres of farmland – he is Zimbabwe’s largest private landowner. This latter holding was given in exchange, we are told, from some dodgy dealings regarding the regime’s defence requirements. His farms have been `spared from seizure apparently to thank him for financial support’ (Sadly for him his ownership has been ignored by carelessly enthusiastic squatters).
This strange man contradicts himself: talking of how he spends his money: "I don't need it but it's my money and if I choose to give it away I'll choose one of the charities I support in Zimbabwe”. Charity? Now there’s a softie! He has recently said that he is tired of making money and plans a career in politics: “I am already involved with politics... well, not in this country." Has anybody told him that, being white and, generous though he is towards Mugabe, he cannot bank on a place in Zimbabwe’s ruling class, not yet anyway. The ethnic cleansing around the farms and businesses has caught on amongst Mugabe’s violent young green bombers who are getting hungry and fast running out of new targets.
His `grandiose second palace’ in Zimbabwe … `to match his £30 million palace’ in England would be fit for a king. The absolute monarch who rules in Zimbabwe right now is about a quarter of a century older than Nicholas. Perhaps Mugabe’s present palace would not be good enough for a would-be, second Tzar Nicholas.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Tuesday, November 1, 2005
CARRYING OLD ENGLAND BACK from ZIM
There is a general consensus among Zimbabweans working abroad that if they can get work, they work harder and are more valued by their employers than the locals - just like migrants the world over. This blog, however, is not about the flame of political freedom that was carried in the historic, pre-independence era. It has a social and economic thrust.
Don't get me wrong, I have not strayed into conservative territory; I am still, as I always have been, pro-democracy and politically dead centre. That is why I am politically dead in this dreadful Mugabe era of Zimbabwe's development. I am blogging on about observed changed standards of behaviour that have evolved very slowly during a lifetime in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and which have suddenly become very visibly new to me in a changed environment here in England.
I was ruminating on these changes today when I tumbled to another conclusion: not only do our migrants work harder etc, be they of British ancestry or not, they often carry back to this ancient island some of the best of their Zimbabwean (and former Rhodesian) social and economic norms. They find themselves more British than the British. These norms were long ago exported to the colonies and the best of them (forget about the worst, for purposes of this argument)are no longer to be found in contemporary Britain In some places that have been sheltered for three or four generations from the slow attrition of old-fashioned values, this may not apply.
The best examples I can think of are in business practises and in education.
I can't think of any time in the colonial era when a business would pull a trick like the following: send a product in the guise of a luxury gift to a customer, and then send another a year later, demanding a double payment and claiming that the recipient had `subscribed' by accepting the first gift. That is not a very subtle `hard sell'. And quoted this very day in a daily paper is the story of an organization using the name of its patron, a famous actor, in order to spend a large sum of the organization's cash on an unpopular project, without having consulted the patron. The actor was furious.
Education: in Rhodesia, and up to about 2000, in Zimbabwe (when the place was run like a country and not like Mugabe's personal fiefdom), nobody would have openly questioned the authority of a headmaster or dreamed of abusing a teacher, let alone drawing a knife on a fellow pupil. We acted almost like obedient Victorian subjects towards authority. Frozen in time, almost. Come to think of it, that might explain today's Zimbabweans' passive response to the nastiest headmaster we have ever experienced.
These examples are not particularly shocking, but I shall be on the lookout for better ones, bigger gripes, to illustrate my point.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
Don't get me wrong, I have not strayed into conservative territory; I am still, as I always have been, pro-democracy and politically dead centre. That is why I am politically dead in this dreadful Mugabe era of Zimbabwe's development. I am blogging on about observed changed standards of behaviour that have evolved very slowly during a lifetime in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and which have suddenly become very visibly new to me in a changed environment here in England.
I was ruminating on these changes today when I tumbled to another conclusion: not only do our migrants work harder etc, be they of British ancestry or not, they often carry back to this ancient island some of the best of their Zimbabwean (and former Rhodesian) social and economic norms. They find themselves more British than the British. These norms were long ago exported to the colonies and the best of them (forget about the worst, for purposes of this argument)are no longer to be found in contemporary Britain In some places that have been sheltered for three or four generations from the slow attrition of old-fashioned values, this may not apply.
The best examples I can think of are in business practises and in education.
I can't think of any time in the colonial era when a business would pull a trick like the following: send a product in the guise of a luxury gift to a customer, and then send another a year later, demanding a double payment and claiming that the recipient had `subscribed' by accepting the first gift. That is not a very subtle `hard sell'. And quoted this very day in a daily paper is the story of an organization using the name of its patron, a famous actor, in order to spend a large sum of the organization's cash on an unpopular project, without having consulted the patron. The actor was furious.
Education: in Rhodesia, and up to about 2000, in Zimbabwe (when the place was run like a country and not like Mugabe's personal fiefdom), nobody would have openly questioned the authority of a headmaster or dreamed of abusing a teacher, let alone drawing a knife on a fellow pupil. We acted almost like obedient Victorian subjects towards authority. Frozen in time, almost. Come to think of it, that might explain today's Zimbabweans' passive response to the nastiest headmaster we have ever experienced.
These examples are not particularly shocking, but I shall be on the lookout for better ones, bigger gripes, to illustrate my point.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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